I met with Katie McMahon, VP Business Development at Shazam,  last month at the DLD Conference.  Shazam is a unique technology that launched in 2002 and enables music lovers to identify and capture songs from any location using just their mobile phone.  Shazam users can take a sound sample, using their mobile phone, and Shazam will return the song title and artist name.  Additionally, once a song has been captured by Shazam, users also have the option to preview or purchase the song, watch a clip of the video or check out more information about the artist or album.  Users can also share songs with friends and catalog or tag songs or information for future reference.

Shazam is the world’s leading mobile music discovery provider and has launched in 75 countries worldwide with a variety of products.  Their leading product is their iPhone application, which is free to download and easy to use.  Using the built in microphone (or an external device if using the iPod Touch) you can capture a song by holding your phone up to the music.  Results are displayed instantly.

Another interesting feature of Shazam is that they allow you to add a photo to a tagged song and share it with friends.  This is a great way to capture memories by pairing memorable photos together with the songs that were playing in the background.  This is just one of the many ways that Shazam is changing the way people discover, share and listen to music.

To see my full interview with Katie McMahon, watch the below video.

MeeMix, the personalized internet radio community that allows users to create personalized music stations and music video channels, has just announced the launch of MeeVideo, its new personalized music video channel application on Facebook.

Similar to MeeMix’s audio channels, MeeVideo gives users the opportunity to create a personalized music video channel and discover new music that fits their musical taste. Videos are streamed via YouTube. Once you choose your favorite artist, MeeVideo will show you music videos of similar artists that you may like, saving you the hassle of trying to find them yourself. You can personalize your channel even further by marking videos that you like as favorites, blocking videos that you don’t like and skipping over videos that you are indifferent to. MeeVideo only allows users to create one video channel at a time, but users can view an unlimited number of music videos.

MeeVideo discovers personalized music videos based on a unique algorithm that takes into account song parameters and user behavior, determining and personalizing each channel based on the user’s distinct taste in music. According to CEO Gilad Shlang, “The amount of work a user must invest in order to find favorable videos in YouTube or other video applications is overwhelming.” MeeMix is able to provide a service that eliminates the hassle of searching for music videos online, making discovering new music a pleasurable experience.

CenterNetworks writes: “This is certainly an application that can seriously increase the time on site metric for Facebook if they can get a strong userbase.” I agree. I found the application to be totally addictive due to my discovery of many suggested music videos that fit my taste.

The MeeVideo application also has some neat social features. You can choose to share favorite videos with friends or post videos that you like to your mini feed. Additionally, a friend-discovery feature allows you to view other users with similar taste to yours. You can befriend them and view their favorite videos, thereby increasing your ability to discover new music even further.

MeeVideo is a great example of an application which actually gives users some added value. The only feature I would add is a search mechanism allowing me to find specific songs that I want to listen to and also share with friends. Wouldn’t it be sweeter to receive Stevie Wonder’s “Happy Birthday” song on your birthday than a picture of a flower on your wall?

The MeeVideo application is now available on Facebook and will also soon be available on other social networks such as: Hi5, Bebo, Orkut and MySpace.

Technorati tags: meemix, meevideo, music, personalized, music video channel, internet radio, community, facebook, facebook application, gilad shlang, social networks

MeeMix has come out with two cool new widgets that I wanted to tell you about.

The Mee Artist widget which displays your most popular artists:

And the Mee Friends widget which displays four of your friends:

This is the one I’ve added myself.

Older widgets allow you to show the song that you’re currently listening to, the music station which you like the most, and lastly, the genre which you like the best.

So if you’re as in love with MeeMix’s logo as I am, go ahead, add some spunk to your blog with one of these beauties.

MeeMix, a new Israeli startup, has launched its beta program yesterday. MeeMix can best be described as a personalized internet radio community. It aims at identifying individual taste and taste prediction in media using its own behavioral-based algorithm and additional methodologies, created in-house.

MeeMix’s idea is similar to Pandora or Last.fm but it uses a different (and better) prediction method in identifying the user’s taste. As my friend Roi writes in his post on TechCrunch:

“Typically, there are two ways to perform such predictions:

1. “Nature” (Pandora) – Decision making is based upon the compatibility between one song and another—personal taste not being part of the equation.
2. “Nurture” (Last.fm) – Decision making is based upon environmental factors—song compatibility not being part of the equation”

Gilad Shlang, CEO of MeeMix tells me: “We see personal preference as the right balance between NATURE and NURTURE. MeeMix believes that your genetic disposition, combined with your present and past experience, defines who you are today. By heeding to both nature and nurture, we are able to offer accurate and better results. For clarification, Nature is based solely on song classification – prepared by our top group of musicologists who analyzed hundreds of musical values- and Nurture is an individual’s own characteristics, combined with his or her interactions in our virtual surroundings. The MeeMix algorithm is a taste prediction tool that not only points out similar songs but also takes geographical, sociological, behavioral and physiological characteristics into account.”

MeeMix is also a social network allowing members to connect based on similar musical tastes, shared passions, or even by reading each other thoughts, journals, reviews, dreams, and secrets (the last available for their Mee friends only). A MeeMix member can broadcast his personal radio station to other members and share his tastes with the entire community. The broadcaster (or Mee’J) can always see his audience and communicate with them. The more listeners you have, the more popular you are, and the more prominent you will be on the site. For those of you who are really into self branding, you can even print out t-shirts with your channel name and number of subscribers.

The first page you will see in MeeMix is the MeePlayer which is, you guessed it, their player. This page is the entertainment system of the site; allowing the member to create multiple (personalized) stations, change the present “mood” of every station (its average beat rate,
level of surprise), and control the interactive features related to the currently playing track, such as adding to favorites, commenting, song rating, and more. The right hand side of the MeePlayer, named “YOU” or “Meet People”, is a living, talking and moving line of communication with other members. You will see YOU throughout the site, in the same place, ready for action.

The MeeMix world includes 4 main content sections:
1. Mee Style – the member’s personal corner in MeeMix. In Mee Style you can:
a. Check who is listening to your stations and contact your fans
b. Get updated on invitations you sent to friends
c. Update or edit your own profile
d. Receive messages from other members

2. Mee People – the MeeMix community. This will be your main meeting place, where you can:
a. Browse through other members’ thoughts
b. Search for people by:
i. Their personal musical style
ii. Member characteristics such as: age, location, sex and more
c. Check out who is listening to whom in MeeMix

3. Music – a section all about music, both in and out of the MeeMix world. If you are looking to browse through members’ stations or check out who is listening to whom, this is the place. In Music, you’ll find:
a. Radio station search by genre
b. Rising Star stations, which are stations with the highest fan growth
c. Most popular stations
d. The newest stations in MeeMix
e. Top 100 Songs in MeeMix
f. New Releases

4. The Source – Website owners and bloggers, this is the place you will find MeeMix widgets and other goodies that you can add to your site. Choose from widgets that present your favorite artists, Music style, Mee friends, and more.

I received an invite from Gilad for the MeeMix private beta and have been playing around with the application in the last two days. Apart from it being an amazing and unique product, MeeMix has one of the nicest and most user-friendly interfaces that I have ever seen. 

Gilad was nice enough to give me 4 more invites. The first 4 people who comment back and say they want one, will get them.